Translating immigration in the multicultural and multilingual United States of America

Abstract As part of its civic integration of new immigrants into the American society, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) published a guide for new immigrants in English and its translations in 14 languages. This paper analyzes USCIS’s English publication titled Welcome to the United States: A Guide for New Immigrants and its Arabic official translation titled مرحبا بكم في الولايات المتحدة: دليل المهاجرين الجدد. The purpose of this paper is to identify any potential translation problems and its impact on the linguistic comprehensibility and the reading experience. Due to the linguistic and cultural differences between English and Arabic, a number of problems are found in the Arabic translation. These problems are categorized under pragmatic, convention-related, linguistic, and text-specific translation problems. The most frequent problems found are linguistic translation problems, particularly semantics and lexical choices. The findings suggest that pragmatic, convention-related, linguistic, and text-specific problems may partially distort the message of the original text, hence contribute to the ambiguity when read by the Arabic-speaking new immigrant to the United States. It is therefore suggested that the Arabic USCIS Guide for New Immigrants needs to be edited by a native professional editor.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Thousands of Arabic-speaking immigrants arrive to the United States every year. The majority of these immigrants speak no to little English. In understanding official communications, Arab immigrants rely on the Arabic translations provided by the United States government. Any mistranslation may lead to misunderstanding thus leading new immigrants to violate the U.S. official instructions which may in turn lead to delays, fines, jail, or deprivation of privileges. Therefore, this article comes to ensure an Arabic translation free from problems. The article reports on the translation problems found in the Arabic translation of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) guide Welcome to the United States: A Guide for New Immigrants. The article does not only offer solutions to overcome the translation problems found in the Arabic translation, but also a detailed sociocultural background that would benefit the U.S. officials and society in their cross-cultural communications with the Arabic-speaking community.

Introduction
The United States of America is a unique multicultural and multilingual immigrant society. While the United States has been a multicultural society for hundreds of years to immigrants from Europe, Africa and Asia, the concept of multiculturalism only started to be incorporated in the political discourse in 1960s as an uprising against the oppression of the monoculture (Goldberg, 1995, I-6). The definition and structure of the multiculturalism of the Unites States are informed and shaped by civil rights movements and advocacy groups as well as the understanding of citizenship and society assimilation. Therefore, we acknowledge the state of a multiculturalism in the United States without a clear-cut definition of the term since it is subject to changing factors across times. Rubin and Verheul explain: Originally mostly used to describe accommodating policy directives that attempted to cope with cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity in traditional immigration countries such as Canada, Australia, and the United States, the term multiculturalism became widely used in many different discourses where it was assigned a variety of meanings. (2009,8) The adoption of the notion of multiculturalism paved the way to the adoption of the notion of multilingualism, recognizing the minority communities that constitute the overall structure of a multicultural society of the United States (Goldberg, 2015). This recognition of minority languages speeds the assimilation of immigrants. It also helps these immigrants better understand the U.S. official discourse and the values of the American society (Joppke & Morawska, 2003).
According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2019) estimation, 1 the current foreign-born (immigrants) population 2 in the U.S. is 44,932,901. Those foreign-born came from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. While 26.3% of the foreign-born population of 25 years and over (39,553,892 people) are less than high school graduate, only 18.5% have bachelor's degree. Moreover, among the 44,634,617 foreign-born of 5 years and over merely 16% speak English only at home. This means that 84% speak a language other than English at home. The report also estimates that 46.4% of the foreign-born speak English less than "very well". It also found that 24.2% of the foreign-born households are limited English speaking households. These foreign-born work in most industries in the U.S. and serve different capacities. Accordingly, these figures capture the necessity of multilingual resources of official communications, in the face of those groups that advocating to grant English the status of the sole official language of the United States of America. 3 In this paper, we study the official Arabic translation of the USCIS English guide for new immigrants. The focus of this study is built around the questions of linguistic comprehensibility and intercultural communication. The justification of this research is realized in the understanding of translation as a salient tool for analyzing immigrants and immigration in multilingual societies. It unveils power relations in the "linguistic and discursive sphere that shape the process of 'making' migrants" (Bachmann-Medick, 2018, p. 273). It is also a site for negotiation between immigrants' self-representation and official labeling. Therefore, any mistranslation in the communications for and involving immigrants is significant and frequent, and adds a layer of complexity, as established in the literature (Augustine-Adams & Nunez, 2021) and discussed under section 2 Literature Review. In addition, there is a gap in literature in studying official communications and translations for the Arabic-speaking immigrant community in the United States. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the U.S. official translation from English into Arabic, as we discuss under section 3 Research Methodology. We start this paper with a brief introduction on the USCIS and the Arab immigrants to the United States. We then review the literature on official translations and translations in culturally and linguistically diverse societies. After that, we elaborate on our research data collection and data analysis procedures. We then move to offer an exhaustive analysis of the research data, providing several examples. After that, we discuss our research findings in a holistic approach as well as in relation to the literature. Finally, we draw conclusions that summarize the main research aspects and findings.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is an agency that operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of the federal government of the United States of America. It was established in 1891 under the Treasury Department (USCIS website). 4 It underwent several reforms, leading to its current form in March 2003 which was triggered by the 9/11 event. It aims to oversee immigration and naturalization processes. USCIS provides services such as citizenship (includes the related naturalization process), immigration of family members of the current permanent residents and U.S. citizens, employment visas in the U.S., verification of an individual's legal right to work in the United States (E-Verify), humanitarian programs to individuals inside and outside the United States who flee wars or at risk of torture and death, adoption of children from other countries by U.S. citizens, civic integration of new immigrants into the American society through training and guidance, and genealogy that offers researchers with "timely access to historical immigration and naturalization records of deceased immigrants" (USCIS website). 5 The USCIS website offers various guides and publications related to numerous topics. Several of these publications and information are translated into other languages. USCIS website is offered fully in Spanish. Translations of certain information and documents to other languages are found under its Multilingual Resource Center. These translations are offered in 21 languages. These languages are Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, American Sign Language (ASL), Chinese, French, Haitian, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Kiswahili, Korean, Nepali, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Tagalog, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
It is also worth noting that a publication may be translated to a language but not another. We assume that USCIS determines the translation of a particular topic to a certain language but not another based on the target language immigrant community needs. For example, the Arabic translations section offers an Arabic translation of the English Information Guide for Prospective Asylum Applicants under the title, which wrongly translates the English "prospective" into the Arabic "political" ,  ‫ﺩ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﻴ‬  ‫ﻞ‬  ‫ﺍ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﻤ‬  ‫ﻌ‬  ‫ﻠ‬  ‫ﻮ‬  ‫ﻣ‬  ‫ﺎ‬  ‫ﺕ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﻤ‬  ‫ﻘ‬  ‫ﺪ‬  ‫ﻣ‬  ‫ﻲ‬  ‫ﻃ‬  ‫ﻠ‬  ‫ﺒ‬  ‫ﺎ‬  ‫ﺕ‬  ‫ﺍ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﻠ‬  ‫ﺠ‬  ‫ﻮ‬  ‫ﺀ‬  ‫ﺍ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﺴ‬  ‫ﻴ‬  ‫ﺎ‬  ‫ﺳ‬  ‫ﻲ‬ (Information Guide for Political Asylum Applicants), the Tagalog translations section does not offer a translation to this guide. Instead, the Tagalog translations section offers a translation of the English guide Report Labor Abuse under the title Iulat ang Abuso sa Pagtatrabaho that is not offered in the Arabic translations.

Arab immigrants to the U.S
In recent years, the Arab-immigrants community has been growing rapidly in the United States. It is mainly made up from those Arabs who have won the Diversity Visa (aka Lottery Visa) and asylum seekers. In addition to these two categories, there are U.S. citizens of Arab origin (Arab-Americans). Those Arab-Americans do not necessarily speak Arabic (Rouchdy, 2002). It is worth noting that the Arab immigrants come from many countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and they also come from various cultures, educational levels, and religious backgrounds.
To discuss the Arab immigration to the United States, we have first to identify what do we mean by Arabs. Arabs are those native speakers of Arabic. However, historically speaking, the Arab world has geographically changed significantly over time (Hitti, 2002). Thus, when speaking about Arabs, we need to identify the era. At present, the Arab world map is changing due to the on-going civil wars that are the prime motivation for the current wave of the Arab immigration to the United States. Having said that, languages other than Arabic are still alive in the Arab world (Pereltsvaig, 2020) but endangered due to the oppression caused by the Arabic language in the region (Frajzyngier, 2018). According to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, 6 in the 22 Arabic-speaking majority countries, there are more than 100 languages in danger in 14 of these countries. Those languages were spoken widely some time ago before the invasion of Arab and consequently Arabic language to those countries in a form of immigration waves from Arabia (the Arabian Peninsula) in the early era of Islam.
The first waves of "Arab" immigrants reached to the United States before the U.S. independence in July 1776. These immigrants came from the Levant, and they were counted under the Greek, Armenian or Turk category, as a white race (Ajrouch & Jamal, 2007). Only, in late 1800s and beginning of 1900s, the time of dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Syria and Lebanon categories were created by the U.S. immigration agency. These first waves of Arab immigrants to the U.S. were at limited scale. Over the times, Arab immigration to the United States varied in number and circumstances.
Currently, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2019) estimation, 7 there are more than 1,260,000 people aged 5 and above speak Arabic at home. Among these people, there are more than 441,000 people who speak English less than "very well". The same estimation also states that there are more than 2 million people in the United States who claim Arab ancestry. However, according to the Arab American Institute Foundation (2018), the U.S. Census Bureau estimation is significantly lower than the actual number of people who claim Arab ancestry, adjusting the number to more than 3,600,000 people. 8

Research AIM and significance
This research aims to identify potential translation problems that may lead to ambiguity and misunderstanding when translating official communications to new immigrants to the United States. The significance of this research is realized in ensuring smooth communication interculturally and interlinguistically which in turn is expected to facilitate the integration and assimilation of Arab immigrants into the American society.

Literature review
The discussion of official translation inevitably invites the discussion of institutional translation since both terms are polysemic and ambiguous, hence they are used interchangeably in some cases. Kang (2009) refers to institutional translation as "either to translating in or for specific organizations". According to Merkle (2013), official translation is a subfield of institutional translation and rarely appears in Translation Studies literature, beyond where a distinction between certified and non-certified translations of official documents is needed. In her attempt to define official translation, Merkle (2013) refers to official translation as "translation and interpretation between the legislated languages within a legally constituted political entity, such as a State or part of a State, a city, or a supranational organization such as the EU". She furthers that the concept may also extend to cover the types of texts under translation such as administrative and legal. She argues that the absence of a clear reference to translation in producing official documents in more than a language raises the question of procedural protocols (how it is accurately translated) and a language's status (the dominant source language versus the minority target language(s)). It also exposes the officially translated languages to the risk of cultural loss when the dominant language culture is heavily borrowed over time (Branchadell, 2011). Therefore, conventionally, official translations have always posed a challenge to communities of diverse linguistic backgrounds. For example, in translating international instruments, Ivrakis (1955) argues, the challenges posed by official translations include the terminological discrepancies which to a smaller or a larger extent were mis-constructed from the source text. He refers such differences to the fact that governments are the suppliers of the official translations of international instruments. He explains that while in-house professional translators employed by a certain foreign affairs ministry are customized to the diplomatic language, they cannot always produce adequate translations for more specialized tasks.
Furthermore, for the past 30 years or so, triggered by globalization, much scholarship has examined immigration as a norm changer in the nation-states, including political, social and cultural traditions as well as citizenship. In the new dogma, the directionality of immigration integration has shifted from assimilation into multiculturalism (Joppke & Morawska, 2003). This paradigm encourages more multilingualism as demonstrated in the emerging official language policies of these liberal states, such as the United States. In this context, the integration of immigrants into the host society can be hindered by unclear or poor translation. In addition to that, the translators' negligence of the fact that their target audience of immigrants come from diverse educational, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds leads them to the assumption that an error in the translation would go unnoticed (Rihani, 2019).
Considering the fact that the United States of America has no official language and English is the United States de facto language, all U.S. official communications are issued primarily in English. Some of these communications are translated into other languages. These official translations, as Clasby (1991) discusses, can be a reason for a legal dispute or a social division among the heterogeneous population of the United States. She explains that official translations are not reviewed, rather they are perceived as objective and accurate under the assumption that the translators are certified and "meet minimum training and competency standards" (Clasby, 1991, p. 532), despite the many pragmatic alterations they make. This in turn, she argues, eliminates cultural perspectives of the "distinctive interpretive communities" (Clasby, 1991, p. 530). Therefore, she suggests that bilingual members of these communities may assess the translations in question.
Unlike Clasby, for Lozano, official translations in the now-called United States started with the arrival of settlers, particularly from England, France and Spain, and they were an "important tool of settlement and nation-building" (Lozano, 2021, p. 74) as well as expanding. While no trace of these translations, the fact that one-quarter of the population in 1790 were non-native English speakers, Lozano argues, suggests that official translations were provided to speakers of languages other than English including to those African slaves brought by the settlers. However, the access to such translations varied based on the target group and the subject under translation. In other words, Lozano claims that translations of official communications were selectively made to certain ethnic group of the population rather than others. This is in line with our findings that certain official documents are translated into some languages but not others as discussed in Section 1.1. In this context, one may defend this practice by explaining that this selectivity is to save money and time as well as to cater to immigrants' needs which vary from an immigrant group to another. But others may argue that such practice raises the question of inclusion in the [political] system of the United States. Furthermore, interestingly, Lozano discusses that in early days of the establishment of the United States, non-English speaker immigrants tend to live in communities with those who they share the same mother tongue in an effort to exercise political pressure on federal and state legislators to provide funded translations of official communications into their native languages.
Furthermore, the translation between English and Arabic, the language pair of the research data, generally encounters linguistic challenges as a result of their variations. Among these challenges is the "lack of tense equivalence between English and Arabic" (Abdelaal, 2020, p. 70). Unlike English, Arabic does not have structures for continuous, perfect, and continuous perfect aspects of the English tenses. Arabic tenses mainly indicate past, present and tense in their simple structure. For example, the Arabic sentence " " (literally: Adham went to the university) does not indicate whether Ahdam has gone, had gone or had been to the university. This problem can also be noticed in the English into Arabic translation of the sentence "Adham is going to the university." The Arabic translation is " " (Adham goes to the university), changing the English present continuous into the Arabic present simple. The source meaning would be then susceptible. Translators therefore have to add some lexical markers to fill the gap in Arabic tense and sustain the source meaning. Hence "Ahdam is going to the university" becomes " " (Adham is going to the university now).
Moreover, a problem may appear in the English-Arabic translation due to their different conventional styles. English uses nominal singular forms for generalization while Arabic uses plural forms for generalization. Thus, a translator may have to change the ST plural form into the TT singular form to comply with the TL conventions. Similarly, uncountable English nouns such as "information" and "advice", pose a translation problem to translators since they can take singular and plural forms in Arabic " " (Blankinship, 2019). In addition, other convention-related challenges encounter the English-Arabic translation is foregrounding and backgrounding as well as shift (Arabic iltifat) from a pronoun to another and from tense to another for emphasis and aesthetic purposes which leave the ST susceptible to a different interpretation than intended by the author.
Similarly to the lack of grammatical equivalence between Arabic and English, Abdelaal (2020) argues that there is a lack of lexical equivalence between Arabic and English which results in meaning loss or distortion. He explains that the lack of lexical equivalence may be total as in the absence of an Arabic equivalence to the English "cool", or partial as in the translation of the Arabic " ‫ﺣ‬ ‫ﺞ‬ " (haj) into the English "pilgrimage" in which "pilgrimage" does not fully encapsulate all meanings of haj. He also discusses that improper selection of vocabularies due to ambiguity of the ST causes problems to the English-Arabic translation. Translators in these situations need to carefully examine the source context and may also need to go beyond that, searching for more information on the topic or requesting clarification from the client. These many lexical and semantic discrepancies between English and Arabic are translation challenges, let alone the problems in the translation of rhetorical devices.
In addition to the linguistic problems which encounter the translation between English and Arabic, culture poses even more problems to the translation between the two languages. The dissimilarities in beliefs, traditions and customs between the English-speaking world and the Arabic-speaking world contribute to cultural challenges in the translation between the two languages. In this context, Al-Zgoul and Al-Salman (2022) argue that culture gives meanings to words and therefore a translator must master both the source and the target cultures in order to accurately convey the cultural embedment. Among the cultural challenges to translation is the culturally bound terms. While English terms such as "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" do not have equivalents in Arabic, Arabic religious terms such as ‫ﺧ‬ ‫ﻠ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﺓ‬ ( " is more natural. Here " ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﻜ‬ ‫ﺴ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ " in the first Arabic phrase literally means "break" while " ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﺨ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﻒ‬ " in the second Arabic phrase means "disobey". In Arabic, " ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﻜ‬ ‫ﺴ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ " (break) is only used with physical objects (Baker, 2011).
While the examples provided above may not necessarily relate to official communications, they offer systematic analysis and clear instances for potential English-Arabic translation problems. To offer instances which relate more closely to official communications that the Arabic-speaking immigrant may encounter, consider the following phrases.
1. "You may not enter a USCIS facility if you have . . . " This is a phrase quoted from the USCIS article on its response to Covid-19. In English, the pronoun "you" can refer to singular and plural. It can also refer to masculine and feminine. However, translating it into Arabic rises a problem since Arabic makes distinctions among the many nouns that the English "you" may refer to. If the English pronoun "you" refers to a singular masculine, the Arabic translation is " ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺖ‬ َ ". If it refers to a singular feminine, the Arabic translation is " ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺖ‬ ِ ". If it refers to dual, the Arabic translation is " ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻤ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ". If it refers to plural masculine, the Arabic translation is " ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻢ‬ ". And if it refers to plural feminine, the Arabic translation is " ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻦ‬ ". Conventionally speaking, the English pronoun "you" is translated into the Arabic " ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺖ‬ َ " that refers to a singular masculine or " ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻢ‬ " that refers to a plural masculine for politeness, overlooking the spectrum of pronouns which has recently been expanded significantly. The Arabic translator is then faced with the dilemma of choosing an equivalent pronoun to the English "you". This quandary is an example of the English-Arabic translation problems a translator may encounter. The translator's choice of pronouns and words, therefore, would start a debate in the new immigrant's mind for bigger questions, including inclusion, representation, discrimination, and engagement in the U.S. society.
2. "USCIS will not accept a Form I-693 completed by a doctor who is not a currently designated civil surgeon." This sentence is quoted from the USCIS Instructions for Form I-693, Report of Medical Examination and Vaccination Record which is required when applying for adjustment of status to becoming a lawful permanent resident. In addition to the potential translation problem of "doctor" into Arabic since the English "doctor" can refer to a male or a female doctor and it has to be specified in Arabic (i.e. ‫ﻃ‬ ‫ﺒ‬ ‫ﻴ‬ ‫ﺐ‬ or ‫ﻃ‬ ‫ﺒ‬ ‫ﻴ‬ ‫ﺒ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ ), the English nominal phrase "civil surgeon" poses a challenge to the Arabic translator. In the context of the USCIS text, a "civil surgeon" is a doctor designated by the USCIS as such and does not necessarily mean or refer to a "surgeon". However, when translated into the Arabic " ‫ﺟ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺡ‬ ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﻲ‬ ", it leaves the Arabic-speaking immigrant wondering. In most cases, it would lead the Arabic-speaking immigrant to look for a surgeon to perform the USCIS required medical exams and complete the Form. This in turn would cost the immigrant much money and time and may at last not be accepted by the USCIS if the surgeon was not a USCIS designated "civil surgeon".

Research methodology
This research is qualitative in nature. The qualitative nature of the research allows more in-depth analysis which in turn offers an exhaustive account of the subject under analysis. The analysis is benefited from the translation-oriented text analysis approach developed in Nord's (2005). In Holmes' terms (as cited in Munday et al., 2022), this research is called product-oriented descriptive translation studies (also known as product-oriented DTS) in which it examines existing translations. It descriptively analyzes the English source text and its Arabic translation. In other words, since to the best of our knowledge this is the first study carried out to examine the U.S. official translation from English into Arabic, this exploratory descriptive study compares the USCIS English source guide and its Arabic translation, identifying possible translation problems. The outcomes of this product-oriented DTS research may be fed into the theoretical branch of translation studies to contribute to the development of a general or a partial theory. This guide is part of the USCIS's civic integration of new immigrants into the American society. It offers various information, including the history and the present state of the United States, as well as its governmental bodies and structures. It also discusses the rights and responsibilities of permanent residents (new immigrants) and how they can maintain their status. In addition to that, the guide provides practical information for the settlement of new immigrants which includes getting their social security number, employment authorization, finding accommodation, finding jobs, childcare, and transportation. The USCIS also takes the opportunity of this guide to educate the new immigrants on how they can protect their money against fraud and scam, as well as how they can manage their finance and pay taxes. The guide also exhaustively talks about the educational and health systems in the United States. It also prepares them to be aware and responsive to any emergencies. The guide ends with a detailed chapter on the U.S citizenship (naturalization processes) as far as those new immigrants are concerned.

Data collection
The Arabic translation of the USCIS's guide for new immigrants was selected for two reasons. First, the author is a native of Arabic and a researcher in the field of English-Arabic translation. Second, the author is a new immigrant to the United States thus part of the Arabic-speaking immigrant community in the U.S. to which this translation is targeted.

Data analysis
The data is analyzed in comparative. (Marhaban bekom fi alwilaiat almutahida: dalil almuhajrin aljudud) is compared to its English source text of the Welcome to the United States: A Guide for New Immigrants. The researchers took notes of any problems in the translation. The problems found are mainly structural, grammatical, stylistic and semantic. We also found typographical errors. After identifying the problems occurred in the Arabic translation, we grouped them under four main categories: pragmatic, linguistic, convention-related, and text-specific translation problems. We then examined the effect of these problems on the overall understandability of the text as well as the message of the source text. After that, we reported on the problems and their impacts. In each category, we also discussed possible approaches for overcoming these translation problems. The approaches are not set, nor are they proposed as ideal resolutions; they are the outcomes of analyzing original examples of translated texts from English into Arabic and offered as "actual" approaches applied rather than the "correct" approaches to apply.
The research analysis is informed by the translation-oriented text analysis approach of Nord (2005) in which she attempts to offer an exhaustive account for text classification and guidelines for translation quality assessment. In analyzing a translated text, its source and its moment of transfer, Nord proposes an analysis guide that includes 17 factors at three levels: (1) Extratextual factors: sender, intention, audience, medium, place, time, motive, and function; (2) Intratextual factors include subject-matter, content, presuppositions, composition, non-verbal elements, lexis, sentence structure, and suprasegmental; and (3) Effect. These factors, individually or collectively, may lead to translation problems.
While the analysis in Section 4 focuses on the micro level, involving mainly some extratextual and intratextual factors selected in line of this study's aim, Section 5 focuses on the macro level, i.e., the effect factor, where an example of textual analysis is provided to illustrate a picture of the way these micro components build up the overall message and how the message is misunderstood due to translation problems.

Analytical framework: Nord's (2005) translation problems
In her translation-oriented text analysis model, Nord (2005) classifies translation problems into four types: pragmatic, convention-related, linguistic, and text-specific. These problems vary in frequency of occurrence. Some of them occur more often than others. (1) Pragmatic translation problems may result from the difference in purpose of the production of the ST versus the TT. This includes the differences between the ST audience versus the TT audience, the ST medium versus the TT medium, and the ST function versus the TT function. In short, pragmatic translation problems can be examined and identified through the analysis of the extratextual factors we mentioned earlier in this section. (2) Convention-related translation problems may appear in a TT due to differences in conventions, norms and culture-specific practices. The emergence of these problems largely depends on the language pair of translation. Thus, they may appear in some translations but not others. These convention problems include linguistic genre and style.
(3) Linguistic translation problems occur due to structural differences between the source language and the target language, in sentence structure and lexis in particular. Translating etymologically related words may result in a linguistic translation problem only when "contrasted with a target language which presents more, or fewer, or other semantic or stylistic differentiations" (Nord, 2005, p. 176). (4) Text-specific translation problems are those problems that exist in a particular text but cannot be classified under any of the three main translation problems we discussed earlier in this sub-section. Because they are text-specific, a solution found to overcome a problem of this type cannot be generalized. Among these problems are individual word creations and figures of speech. Furthermore, the notion of "translation problems" has significant pedagogical implications through allowing a structured aim in the sphere of transfer competence. In other words, the classification of translation problems found in a text defines the translator's competence level at that point of time. This in turn showcases the areas that the translator needs to enhance within the transfer competence domain.

Findings
In this section, we discuss the translation problems that took place in translating the English source text into its Arabic target text. The problems are classified under four main categories: pragmatic, convention-related, linguistic, and text-specific. This classification is not clear-cut since some texts contain more than one problem, thus can be classified under more than one category. Nevertheless, this classification provides systematic analysis. It is worth noting that all back translations are the authors'.

Pragmatic translation problems
The main pragmatic translation problem found in this study arises from the difference in audience between the ST and the TT. The English guide is read by the English-speaking new immigrants to the U.S. These immigrants have some general background knowledge of the U.S., and its geography, history, and systems e.g., political, health. The Arabic guide, on the contrary, is read by the Arabic-speaking new immigrants to the U.S. who have no to little background knowledge of the U.S., and its geography, history, and systems e.g., political, health. An example of pragmatic translation problems is found in page two of both the English source guide and the Arabic translated guide. This page offers contact information of some U.S. Departments, Agencies, Administrations, and Commissions that may be of benefit to the new immigrants. The translator's lack of background knowledge of the variation in government structures (administrative branches) between that of the U.S. and those of the Arab World created a pragmatic translation problem realized in the translator's mistranslation of several administrative branches. In addition to the mistranslation of the English "Department" into the " (maslahat aldarayib alamrikia, literally: Internal Revenue Service). Moreover, while the English guide indents the following branches: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under U.S. Department of Homeland Security to establish a relationship; the fact that these three branches are part of the Department, the Arabic guide does not indent these branches, leaving the Arabic audience to the reading that these branches are independent, not part of the Department.

Convention-related translation problems
In the English source guide, "USCIS" was introduced at the beginning of the guide as an abbreviation of the "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services". It was then used thereinafter to refer to thereof. However, Arabic conventionally does not tolerate abbreviation. Therefore, we found that the Arabic translation fully spells "USCIS" into " " (da'rat khadamat idarat aljinsia wa alhijra) throughout the guide. Such inconsistency may affect partially on the understanding of the original message in some cases or leads to confusion in others. Other examples of English abbreviations that the Arabic translation fully spells out are "HUD" of "U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development", "IRS" of "The Internal Revenue Service", "U.S." of "United States" and "CR" of "conditional permanent resident".
Another convention-related problem is the repetition of the Arabic " )" (yahtawi dalil alhatif almahaliyi (dalil alhatifi)) to comply with the English style of "Your local phone book (telephone directory)". In Arabic, both "phone book" and "telephone directory" are translated to the single phrase " ‫ﺩ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﻴ‬ ‫ﻞ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﻬ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺗ‬ ‫ﻒ‬ " (dalil alhatif) which became a repetition in Arabic. While this repetition does not affect the understanding of the source message, it is suggested to be omitted for clarity and flow of the reading experience.

Linguistic translation problems
Linguistic translation problems found in this study are mainly syntactic and semantic problems. Syntactic problems include sentence structure problems. Structural problems are expected in translating from English into Arabic and vice versa due to the different syntactic features and properties of the two languages (Hijjo & Almanna, 2022). While English is a subject-verb-object (SVO) structured, Arabic is conventionally a verb-subject-object (VSO) structure. However, due to literal translation, SVO order is now more common in Arabic than before. The Arabic SVO does not necessarily distort the understanding of the source message, but it still does not sound natural. For example, the English source text "Most federal offices are closed on official holidays" was translated into Arabic into an SVO  Furthermore, a structural challenge took place in translating the English adjectives "federal, state and local" as in "federal, state, and local community services", "federal, state, and local government agencies", "federal, state, and local laws", "federal, state, and local income taxes", "federal and state taxes", "Federal and State Health Programs" to the Arabic as in " " (albaramij alsihiyat alfidralia walwalaiya, which reads: Federal and loyal health programs) respectively. Except the last example, the translation is awkward but not wrong. The last example in which "state" became " ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﻻ‬ ‫ﺋ‬ ‫ﻴ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ " (alwalaiya: loyal) which in Arabic sounds similar, it resulted in a different message than that of the source text. This problem is the result of the absence of an adjective form of the noun) ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﻻ‬ ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ walaya: state(in Arabic. The translators' various attempts to overcome this challenge went unsuccessful and resulted in distorting the source text structure or led to ambiguity. Semantically speaking, following the American style of government and labelling, "Ministries" are called "Departments". Therefore, the English source guide maintained the use of "Department(s)". In Arabic, as in English, the word "department" can mean different things but not that of the meaning "ministry". However, while in the Arabic translation, it was translated into " ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ‫ﺓ‬ " (wizara: ministry), in few cases, the translator used the general meaning of "department" which is " ‫ﻗ‬ ‫ﺴ‬ ‫ﻢ‬ " (qsim: division) instead of " ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ‫ﺓ‬ " (wizara: ministry), such as in translating "Federal Departments and Agencies" to " ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﻷ‬  ‫ﻗ‬  ‫ﺴ‬  ‫ﺎ‬  ‫ﻡ‬  ‫ﻭ‬  ‫ﺍ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﻮ‬  ‫ﻛ‬  ‫ﺎ‬  ‫ﻻ‬  ‫ﺕ‬  ‫ﺍ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﻔ‬  ‫ﺪ‬  ‫ﺭ‬  ‫ﺍ‬  ‫ﻟ‬  ‫ﻴ‬  ‫ﺔ‬ " (alaqsam walwikalat alfidralia). This semantic problem distorts the understanding of the source message when read by the Arabic-speaking immigrant.
A second example of semantic problems is the mistranslation of lexical choice that took place in translating the "U.S. Department of the Treasury" into " " (yawm ras alsana). This mistranslation suggests that January 2 is a public holiday, which it is not. Therefore, the Arabic mistranslation leads to a misunderstanding when read by the new Arab immigrants in the United States.
A fourth semantic problem occurs in the Arabic translation of the English source text "As a permanent resident" into " " (eindama tusbih muqiman dayman: Once/after you become a permanent resident). This mistranslation severely affects the source text understanding and leads to confusion of the new permanent residents since they already became permanent residents as stated in the Guide: "Congratulations on becoming a permanent resident of the United States of America!".
A fifth semantic problem is found in the translation of the English source text "notaries public" in "Some consultants, travel agencies, real estate offices, and people called "notaries public" offer immigration services." into the ." (yumkinuk shira sunduq alisafat alawalia min alsaydalia almahaliya alkhasa bik: You can buy a first aid kit at your own local drugstore) of the source English "You can buy a first aid kit at your local drugstore". Having discussed that, this mistranslation occurs only in cases where "your" does not mean "your own/ possession". Therefore, the Arabic translation " ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﺨ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺻ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ ‫ﺑ‬ ‫ﻚ‬ " (alkhasa bik) is not inaccurate in general but limited to the cases of non-possession of "yours".
Furthermore, some lexical choices in Arabic translation may affect the understanding of the source message, including the translation of "a resource" in "a resource for new immigrants" into " ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ‫ﺩ‬ " (mawrid) in " " (mawrid lilmuhajirin aljudud) which is correct but may not be understood by all immigrants. We suggest " ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﺼ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ " (masdar) instead, for better understanding and avoiding any ambiguity. In addition, the Arabic translation " ‫ﺳ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺩ‬ " (sadad) of the English "pay" suggests that it is a bill or an outstanding amount to pay rather than a fee as intended in the original text as in "You may have to pay a fee when calling 411", "Pay federal, state, and local income taxes" and "You must pay a fee to file Form I-131", among others. This unclarity in the Arabic translation can be avoided by translating "pay" to " ‫ﺩ‬ ‫ﻓ‬ ‫ﻊ‬ " (dafaa) instead of " ‫ﺳ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺩ‬ " (sadad). While " ‫ﺳ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺩ‬ " (sadad) may be accepted as a translation of "pay" in the previous examples, it cannot be accepted as a translation of "paying" in "paying a security deposit" into the Arabic " " (ezalat alshurut) is a literal translation of "removed" into " ‫ﺇ‬ ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ " (ezala) which is conventionally used for something physical. A natural translation of "remove" in Arabic can be " ‫ﺇ‬ ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ﻔ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺀ‬ " (a'faa: waiving) or " ‫ﺇ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﻐ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺀ‬ " (elgaa: canceling). Another lexical choice problem that also involves inconsistency of translating terms is found in the Arabic translation of the English "Status" as in " " (wadeiat: position) and " ‫ﺻ‬ ‫ﻔ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ " (sifat: description, adjective or attributive). Such inconstancy may lead to ambiguity or poor reading experience to the new Arab immigrants in the United States. We suggest that " ‫ﺻ‬ ‫ﻔ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ " (sifat: description, adjective or attributive) is to be used consistently throughout the guide as a translation of "status" in the contexts of the "permanent resident status". The choice of " ‫ﺻ‬ ‫ﻔ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ " (sifat) is based on its meanings and implications that includes acquirable, attribution, eligibility and changeability.
A last example that illustrates poor lexical choices that do not affect the understanding of the source message is the Arabic translation " " (ayn tatalaqa almusaada) of the English source text "Where to Get Help", for various resources including Internet resources. The translator(s) literally translated "get" into " ‫ﺗ‬ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻠ‬ ‫ﻘ‬ ‫ﻰ‬ " (tatalaqa) which is more of the meaning "receive". In this context, "get" is better understood by the Arabic " ‫ﺗ‬ ‫ﺠ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ " (tajid: find); (ayn tajid almusaada: Where to find help).

Discussion
Several problems are found in the Arabic translation of the source English USCIS's Guide for New Immigrants. The problems found are categorized under pragmatic, convention-related, linguistic, and text-specific translation problems. The most frequent problems are linguistic problems. These problems are discussed based on their effect on the understanding of the source message and the reading experience.
It is worth noting that while this study attempts to categorize the translation problems found in the Arabic translation, it is by no means a clear-cut categorization. The reason behind this disclaimer is that in most cases of translation problems, more than one category can be called, even at the word level. For example, while " ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﺑ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﻧ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﻥ‬ " (arbunaan) is a typographical error as we discussed earlier, it is also a semantic problem of lexical choice. The correct translation of "a security deposit" is " ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﺒ‬ ‫ﻠ‬ ‫ﻎ‬ ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﻀ‬ ‫ﻤ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﻥ‬ " (mablag aldaman). The Arabic " ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﺑ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﻥ‬ " (arbun) is an advance payment. The difference between "a security deposit" and "an advance payment" is that a security deposit is refundable and nondeductible from the total amount. An advance payment is the first payment paid by a client for an installment or reserving a booking. The reason why Arabs use the two terms interchangeably is due to the absence of the concept of security-When: Permanent resident on a conditional basis must file with his wife Form I-751. Immigrant investors must file Form I-829. Both of these forms must be filed within the 90 days before permanent residence on a conditional basis situation validity expires. The validity expiration date is on the Permanent Resident Card.
From where I get the form: You can get the form at www.uscis.gov or by calling the American Citizenship and Immigration Services Administration USCIS Forms Line at 1-800-870-3676.
To where I send the form: Do send it to an American Citizenship and Immigration Services Administration USCIS service center. The addresses of the service centers are many in the instructions existed in the form.
What are the costs: You must pay a fee to file Form I-751 or Form I-829. Before submitting the form, try to check for the most current filing fees at the American Citizenship and Immigration Services Administration at http://www.uscis.gov/fees.
If you file Form I-751 or Form I-829 on time, the American Citizenship and Immigration Services Administration will usually send you a warning to extend your situation as a resident for 12 months. In this time, at the American Citizenship and Immigration Services Administration (USCIS) will review your application.
In this example, the English "USCIS" is translated into the Arabic " ". The misspelling is minor and does not affect the understanding of the source message. Nevertheless, it may affect the flow and the reading experience. In translating the English "Conditional permanent resident (CR)", the Arabic translator(s) opted to translate the English adjective "conditional" into the Arabic prepositional phrase " ‫ﻋ‬ ‫ﻠ‬ ‫ﻰ‬ ‫ﺃ‬ ‫ﺳ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺱ‬ ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﺸ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﻁ‬ " (on a conditional basis). The reason behind this shift is that the adjective "conditional" ( ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﺸ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﻁ‬ in Arabic) cannot be attributed to a person (i.e. resident), but to his status. In the same English sentence, "conditional permanent resident" was abbreviated to "(CR)" so that the abbreviation is used thereinafter. Nevertheless, Arabic, as we discussed earlier in Section 4.1, does not use acronyms, it rather spells them out fully. Accordingly, the acronym "(CR)" does not serve its purpose in the Arabic translation. Having said that, it may be used to educate the Arabic-speaking new immigrants of such terms in English since they may encounter them during their communication with USCIS. The same applies to all English acronyms left untranslated in the Arabic translation. Moreover, the English word "status" is translated to " ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺿ‬ ‫ﻊ‬ " (situation) in Arabic. As we discussed in Section 4.3, the lexical choice of " ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺿ‬ ‫ﻊ‬ " (situation) that implies a "state" may contribute to the misunderstanding of "permanent resident" in which new Arab immigrants take it for granted as a "permanent state" without observing its terms and conditions. Therefore, we suggest " ‫ﺻ‬ ‫ﻔ‬ ‫ﺔ‬ " that implies "attributions". Another, yet more importantly, problem is the translation of the English "two years after" into the Arabic " ‫ﺧ‬ ‫ﻼ‬ ‫ﻝ‬ ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﻴ‬ ‫ﻦ‬ ‫ﺑ‬ ‫ﻌ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ " (within two days after). This is a mistranslation that leads to ambiguity and confusion that leads in turn to a serious miscommunication between the USCIS and the new Arab immigrants to the United States. The English phrase "the date you become" was translated into the Arabic " ‫ﺗ‬ ‫ﺎ‬ ‫ﺭ‬ ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﺦ‬ ‫ﺗ‬ ‫ﺤ‬ ‫ﻮ‬ ‫ﻟ‬ ‫ﻚ‬ ‫ﻝ‬ " (the date you shifted to). The Arabic translation here suggests that the new immigrants had different status in the U.S. This suggestion may apply to those immigrants living in the U.S. and filed for adjustment of status. This in turn compromises the English source narrative "become" which applies to all immigrants regardless of the way they "become" conditional permanent residents. In the next line of this excerpt, the English phrase "filing together with his or her spouse" was translated into the Arabic " ‫ﻳ‬ ‫ﻘ‬ ‫ﺪ‬ ‫ﻡ‬ ‫ﻣ‬ ‫ﻊ‬ ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺟ‬ ‫ﺘ‬ ‫ﻪ‬ " (file with his wife). The Arabic translation jeopardizes the source message of "spouse" that includes either the husband or the wife. We suggest that the Arabic term " ‫ﺯ‬ ‫ﻭ‬ ‫ﺟ‬ ‫ﻪ‬ " (pair, spouse) to be used here to convey the entire source message to the Arabic readers and to avoid any confusion as a result. Another semantic shift is found in